from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Eating healthier is a common new year's resolution, and it might be good to start simple and stop consuming one unhealthy snack item. However, a completely healthy diet is a totally different task. There are countless fad diets that don't really work or aren't as healthy as they're supposed to be. On top of all that, we should also keep an eye out for the outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and food safety recommendations. Maybe people who drink all their calories aren't totally crazy....

from the dysfunction-junction dept

As we've covered at length, the United States' 2010 National Broadband Plan was a bit of a dud. It paid a lot of lip service to improving broadband competition but was hollow to its core, using politically-safe rhetoric and easily-obtainable goals to help pretend the government had a plan to fix the nation's uncompetitive broadband duopoly. But while the NBP was a show pony, the companion plan to use $7.5 billion of the Recovery Act stimulus fund to shore up last and middle mile networks was supposed to have been notably more productive.

Or not.

Of that $7.5 billion (out of the Act's $840 billion total), $3.5 billion was set aside to help improve broadband connectivity in the nation's harder to reach areas. The funds were managed by the USDA's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), who then doled out the funds as needed to those who applied with sensible business models. But a recent report by Politico suggests that the program has what you might call a spotty success record:

"A POLITICO investigation has found that roughly half of the nearly 300 projects RUS approved as part of the 2009 Recovery Act have not yet drawn down the full amounts they were awarded. All RUS-funded infrastructure projects were supposed to have completed construction by the end of June, but the agency has declined to say whether these rural networks have been completed. More than 40 of the projects RUS initially approved never got started at all, raising questions about how RUS screened its applicants and made its decisions in the first place."

If these programs don't pull their full awarded amount by September, the awards are forfeited, and can't be used by areas that would have otherwise benefited. Of course if you've followed the broadband industry at all over the years, you might recall that these broadband gaps aren't supposed to exist in the first place. We've thrown billions upon billions in tax cuts and subsidies at incumbent companies like AT&T and Verizon over a generation, and the result has fairly consistently been broken promises, zero accountability, and a government that repeatedly makes it clear they're ok with that.

And just like these programs of old, the RUS broadband effort threw money around without actually knowing where it was going:

"We are left with a program that spent $3 billion,” Mark Goldstein, an investigator at the Government Accountability Office, told POLITICO, “and we really don’t know what became of it."

And here's the kicker: the Politico report doesn't even highlight some of the worst fraud seen in the program. Earlier this year we noted how West Virginia was the poster child for this program's dysfunction, with Verizon, Cisco and Frontier convincing the state to spend millions in broadband subsidies on over-powered, unused routers, redundant, useless consultants, and "upgrades" that appear to have benefited nobody. The state then buried a consultant's report highlighting how companies and state leaders engaged in systemic, statewide fraud on the taxpayer dime. Nothing much has happened since.

While the continued failures of broadband subsidies will be used as an example that broadband subsidies don't work, they're more an example of how we're utterly unwilling to fix campaign finance reform. Spending and tracking this money shouldn't have been all that hard; we just aren't willing to clean up a political system beholden to unaccountable giants before throwing billions of dollars into its angry maw. Meanwhile, when you have armies of politicians consistently and proudly running on the platform that government can never work, the fruit of this labor can't be all that much of a surprise.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

In 1972, a guy could eat just 14 hot dogs at the Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest and win. The highest number of hot dogs consumed since then is a nauseating impressive 69 hot dogs, but if you can eat more than 60 or so, you can still compete with the best of them. If you like hot dogs, but maybe don't want to eat more than a couple at a time, check out a few of these links.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are more common than many people think. Diabetics nowadays who rely on insulin shots aren't getting their medicine from pigs/cows or other mammals -- and haven't been for decades. Modern sources of insulin come from vats of genetically engineered bacteria. So what about GMOs and GMO-produced products in our food supply? Most Americans have definitely eaten some GMO food, but is there any end to GMO experimentation in the wild now?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of cases where food regulations are reasonable safety measures, but sometimes there are serious government decisions that sound a bit ridiculous (eg. the Supreme Court deciding that a tomato is a vegetable in 1893). Here are just a few examples of more recent politically-charged food proposals.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There's the old saying that "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." But how is it that when you have big dead animals to get rid of, people reach for dynamite? Clearly, people just like to blow things up.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Poking through your fridge for a snack doesn't quite count as hunting for food. Not too many of us actually kill what we eat or farm fruits and vegetables, but there are a few online tools that'll help people see where they're food is coming from. Here are just a few examples of food-tracking projects that could bring some aspects of farming closer to home.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The art and science of cooking has a bright future, especially given all the different cooking shows and TV networks dedicated to food. As more and more people discover and learn about the science behind cooking, it stands to reason that there will be a growing number of interesting ways to cook. Maybe cooking is the key to teaching the scientific method to kids...?